06 May 2014

I’m going to combine two
days, Sunday, 4 May and Monday, 5 May.On Sunday, Arthur leaves for Berlin, so we taxi over to the
Hauptbahnhof, have a coffee, and he mounts the stairs for his train to Berlin
(which happens to be operated by Czech Rail – the same people that took me to
Prague just the week before.I have some
sadness at his leaving, and not a small bit of loneliness.I do go to the Reisecentrum and buy a round trip ticket for Lutherstadt-Wittenburg
for the following day.Now what to
do?I revisit.

Well, not really.I go to the Porzellan Sammlung at the Zwinger.It apparently was an exhibition that Arthur was not interested in.So I go by myself.August the Strong collected over 22,000
pieces of porcelain and then established his own concern at Meissen.Beautiful things are held in the collection,
which manage not only to reflect his taste, but also the development of
porcelain manufacture in China and Japan.Porcelain + Baroque = Incredible!

I go to revisit two of my
favorite things.One is the van Eyck
triptych, which I showed in an earlier post.The other is the Dürer Adam and Eve.

The first was newly
discovered here, and the second was something I have longed to see all of my
life.Both of them encapsulate not only
my faith, but my esthetic as well.It’s
delightful to see them in the pigment.

In the early evening, I
go to the Hofkirche for Mass.It is not
a pontifical mass, even though the Bishop turns out to be the celebrant.It is a warm, welcoming, and “just what I
need” kind of mass.The sermon is an
excellent exposition of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, and the readings are done by
a laywoman, who also serves as a Eucharistic Minister as well.She has a no nonsense kind of presence, while
the bishop tosses off several jokes.It
is an interesting juxtaposition.The
mass is celebrated at the new altar at Hofkirche.I don’t know what it is made of (stone
and glass, I think) but it comes across as a not-so-good green dress with
sequins. My friend, Lizette Larson-Miller, asks me what I think of it.I comment that it is certainly no worse than
the Pieta in the front chapel.Another friend, via email, warns me about
Roman pitfalls.At this point in my life
I prefer to see our points of agreement and prayer rather than detect fine
lines of difference.I go home quite
satisfied.

The next morning I make
my way to the Hbf again (it is only later that we discover that Dresden Mitte is much closer.The picture above, the main door of the Schloßkirche is what I was hoping
for.From a very desolate train center
(First Clue) I take a taxi to the Church. “Really?!” says the driver (Second
Clue).When we get there I see the
problem:

When I check in at the
information center my worst fears are realized.Both this church and the “city church” are closed…until 2016.So I go to a restaurant that specializes in
potatoes (101 Angeboten) and drown my
sorrows.I walk around the town a bit;
discover a Lutheran convent (Christusbrudershaft)
and their beautiful little chapel (closed).

A small bulletin board
tells me all about them.

I go back to Dresden, go
to my hotel, and check into flights.I
do have a ticket to Schwannensee at
the Semperoper, but I’m not expecting
much.I go over early expecting to be
rejected at the door (these are the tickets I purchased from a scalper.I get in – go up to the FOURTH Ring, Row 1,
Seat 73.From this vantage point, I can
see nothing.

The people sitting next
to me are from Holland, and as luck would have it, purchased their tickets from
the same guy.We laugh.During the performance we make our way to the
SRO rail, and see the entire performance from dead center.Wunderbar!I have wonderful conversations with Tom and
Maia (who spent a great deal of her life working with people with AIDS), and
then we take our leave.They are on to
Berlin in the RV, and I’m flying home to San Francisco.What a wonderful time zusammen.

04 May 2014

This post is dedicated to so many people, people
who gave me gifts of vision and insight, of art and music, of mind and
understanding.So this is for Carl Otto
Albert Hiller, Flora Meyer, Norman Gienapp, Rita Henning, Ms. Wasmund, Louise
Hiller, Marcus Schweder, Paul Gibson, Michael Bicklen, Prof. Zawoiski, George
Hoyer, Joanne Koerber, Adalbert Rafael Kretzmann, and Betty Kretzmann, Robert
Bergt, Mark Bangert, Art Halbardier, David Hogan, Jon Rollins, Gertrude Döderlein, and so many others who gave me the gift of seeing and
loving beauty.Dankeschön.

It’s cold and a bit
drizzly but we still make the hike down Praterstraße
in order to catch our train to Leipzig.This long walk takes us through the modern realizations of the new city
scape that was to remake Dresden.In my
younger days, I might have appreciated it, but right now it seems to be “all
mall, all the time.”It is quiet,
however, with not too many pedestrians.We catch our train, and soon we’re off into the Saxon countryside –
which is quite beautiful.The spring
green meadows are punctuated with rapeseed fields’ bright yellow and gleaming
in the sun.This is a Saxonian milk run,
but who can complain for €14, round trip.

Arthur has never been
here, but he immediately spots what I noticed the first time that I was here, a
couple of years ago, and that is the wonderful sculpture that adorns not only
the civic buildings, and churches here, but also the commercial buildings as
well.I quickly take him to one of my
most favorite of places, Riquet, a wonderful coffee shop opposite Speckshof, a
wonderful warren of commercial passages, like those in Paris.Riquet is a fine place and we stop first to
see what the offerings are.

I finally spring for a
slice of the Eierschecke, and Arthur
is soon involved with a very series cake filled with sour cherries, and a
little schlag.

Each of the Höffe has different architectural
aspects and ornamentation, and each one is a delight.The stores gleam like jewels and beckon one
in.I am leaning backward to take the
picture above, when suddenly I hear a brass choir begin to play In dir is Freude.At once I am bent over in tears, and
recall a couple of other moments in my life when this has happened.The first was at the Louvre in Paris when I
came upon the Nike of Samothrace.Looking at it, I realized that what all those people had told me about
beauty was true – and I cried out of the joy of knowing that. Here I am reminded of my deep Lutheran roots, now nourished by other traditions - but deep roots they are.

We are in Bach’s other
church – Nickolaikirche, and later in
the evening we will come back for a concert here.Right now it is enough to look at the beauty
of this neo-classical room with its pillars crowned with lily of the
valley.We walk around a bit, and then
decide to go to Thomaskirche, the
other Bach church.

On the way over there we
stop by the Mädler Passage with its wonderful sculptures, where I buy a pair of
reading glasses.I love German
glasses.We also stop in at the Altes Rathaus, but decide not to go
in.

Thomaskirche, at its heart, is a medieval building, and I think that I gravitate
to it more.The altarpiece is stunning,
and the message of the artwork and windows is unabashedly Lutheran –
Christian.We immerse ourselves in this
a bit, and I remember another moment where my roots began to show.It was right after I had decided to seek
reception into the Episcopal Church as a priest.I was standing in the choir at Trinity Church
in San Francisco, and we began to sing the hymn Jesu, meine Freude.This one
choked me up as well, reminding me of all that had been given – was I giving it
up?(No, but it’s good to know your
roots.)Thomaskirche moves and will continue to move me for not only what
it was under Bach, but also what it continues to be.

We grab lunch, a
delicious fish.Hordes of people are
circling the church – there are pilgrims there.After lunch, full 40 minutes before the three o’clock concert is to
begin we go to the church.It is packed,
and we are lucky to find a seat.

We quickly realize that
we are not at a concert at all – it is a service.It is Gottesdienst.The Pfarrer in his robe and befchen greets
the assembled people (who are sitting in pews, standing along the edges,
propped up at the columns in the aisles) and greets them in the name of the
Good Shepherd, a hint at the following day's readings.Here is what we were treated to:

The bulletin asks us not
to applaud and no one does.The people
leave in silence.In it all, I feel as
though I have been steeped in all that I have been taught over time, steeped in
a concentrated wine of its essential goodness.

We go back to Nikolaikirche, and for all its beauty,
it doesn’t even touch the Thomaskirche experience.This is a concert, and in spite of the
greetings from the dressed down Pfarrer, and his closing prayer, there is
applause, and it remained only a concert.

We rush back to catch a
6:00 train to Dresden, and arrive back tired but exhilarated.A small statue greets us as we make our way
back up Praterstraße.

First we have an errand to perform, so we walk over to the
Hauptbahnhof (this is some distance) in order to buy tickets so that we can
train to Leipzig on the morrow.It’s
easily enough done and its only €28 for the both of us – round trip!So we are all set.The goal is to go to the Hygiene Museum, and
it looks doable on the map, but we soon get lost, winding up in the Blüherpark
– and what a pleasant surprise that was with a delightful memorial to Mozart
(above) and other sculptures and fountains.

Thanks to Arthur’s telephone, we figure out where we are and
make our way past a huge stadion easily
to the German Hygiene Museum.The
building was built in the 30s, and is a moderne wonder.Huge masses of linear white masses are set
off by curving interior walls, and monumental stained glass windows praising
the benefits of good health.

The museum, however is aller
Kinder, alle Zeit, and the Café seems unmoved by human need, so we walk
back to the Zentrum, wondering what
we are going to do.We pass by the City
Museum, and go in.It is really quite
interesting, with displays on the development of Dresden as a commercial
center, and later as a capital, and finally as “the Florence of the North.”There is a complete and helpful rehearsal of
events leading from the revolutions in the mid-Nineteenth century up through
the First World War, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi horrors, the 1945 bombing,
the DDR, and the quiet revolution at the end of the 80s.

Throughout all of this the material culture of the city is
carefully explained, and one can see how various political reactions were
nurtured by situations in the workplace and industry.On the bombing: a very humbling film showing
the bombing of Dresden, along with London, Guernica, and other cities is
shown.There is, however, little said
about Dresden’s Jews and their fate.

On another level there is a wonderful gallery showing the
work of Dresdner artists, from the past century and current efforts.Some names I remembered, but others were
entirely new to me.That’s what’s so
wonderful about travel.We remember that
there is always something more to learn.Sometimes we get lost in our own culture, or in the pocket of our particular
culture.It’s always good to get lost somewhere else.